AHL season starts up this weekend

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It's been a long off-season, but the American Hockey League finally resumes action Friday.

The league will understandably have a different look to it with three teams - the Charlotte Checkers (Florida), Springfield Falcons (St. Louis) and Milwaukee Admirals (Nashville) - opting out of this COVID impacted season. The divisions have also been realigned so teams can stay within a smaller geographic area (except for the Canadian Division, which is a bit of a mess as it awaits Ontario government approval).

Perhaps the best part about the AHL's opening weekend is that all games are free to watch on AHL TV until Monday (please take note, QMJHL Live).

Here's a look at the Sea Dogs alumni who received invites to AHL camps (drop us a note if we missed someone).

Bakersfield Condors (Edmonton): Ostap Safin

Chicago Wolves (Carolina): Spencer Smallman

Cleveland Monsters (Columbus): Brett Gallant

Manitoba Moose (Winnipeg): Luke Green

Ontario Reign (Los Angeles): Boko Imama

Providence Bruins (Boston): Callum Booth

Vladislav Kotkov took part in San Jose Barracuda (San Jose) training camp before being assigned to the Sea Dogs earlier this week.

Boko Imama has already been going back-and-forth between the Reign and the Kings taxi squad - and the same could end up happening with Tomas Jurco and Vegas/Henderson. Alex D'Orio will likely stay on Pittsburgh's taxi squad for the season, but would have likely become an AHL regular this year under normal circumstances.

A couple of notables not in the AHL this season include Jakob Zboril and Joe Veleno. Zboril is now a regular on the Boston Bruins backend while the Detroit Red Wings have opted to keep Veleno in Sweden for the rest of the season.

There's always plenty of turnover with Sea Dogs alumni in the minor pro ranks - but Brett Gallant has remained a constant. Gallant, now 32, has been playing pro hockey since the 2009-10 season and his HockeyFights.com page is still having clips added to it regularly. Gallant is one of the few remaining players from the Sea Dogs' inaugural 2005-06 season still playing the sport competitively.